So you're more Indian if you live on a rez? Really?

Lona Dell Harlow (Morris) is my Cherokee grandmother

Continuing with the Elizabeth Warren debacle - her family story isn't enough. 
Apparently the Cherokee are not opening any doors for Ms. Warren but Twila Barnes (who is demanding an apology) has invited her to lunch.
According to this, Indians who live on or near their rez are more Indian.

The following quote is from the New Yorker:

Twila Barnes, the proprietor of Polly’s Granddaughter, a blog devoted to Cherokee genealogy and pseudo-genealogy. Last week, during an interview with the talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, Barnes tried to explain Cherokee identity as a form of citizenship. “Being Cherokee is not a race of people—it’s a nation of people,” she said. “And we descend from a group of people who always stayed with their nation, rebuilt their nations after destructive things like the Trail of Tears or the Civil War. Those people always stayed together as a nation.” Her definition hints at the violations that have served, perversely, to sanctify this identity, and also at the responsibilities that usually accompany the privileges of citizenship.
Barnes and Ingraham spent a few pleasant minutes dissecting Warren’s unproven claims, and then Ingraham asked Barnes about her own background.

Ingraham: “So, Twila, are you full-blooded Cherokee, yourself?”
Barnes: “No.”
Ingraham: “What’s your lineage?”
Barnes: “My blood quantum is—”
Ingraham, laughing: “‘Quantum’! I like this. What is it?”
Barnes: “It’s blood quantum, and mine is seven thirty-secondths.”
Ingraham: “What the heck does that mean? I don’t even know what that means!”
Barnes: “That means I am—my grandfather was just below being a full-blood Cherokee.”
Ingraham: “O.K.”
Barnes: “And then my grandmother was white, so my mother got half of his blood. And my father’s white, so I got half of my mother’s.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/06/elizabeth-warren-who-is-native-american.html#ixzz1wsH4F9xP

And here is a another viewpoint:..."First of all, they're Republicans," she said, practically spitting. "And that's how they think, instead of looking at the fact that Elizabeth Warren could be the best thing that ever happened to Indians, with all the work she's done for the economically oppressed." http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/elizabeth-warren-and-attacks-cherokee


Add this interview with David Truer to the list:

Audio and Transcript from Yesterday’s Talk of the Nation

Talk of the Nation had David Treuer and Mary Annette Pember on to discuss Native identity and ancestry yesterday.

Here is the audio: .20120607_totn_03
The transcript is here.